Inclusive

Inclusive organizations are diverse at all levels. The decisions they make incorporate a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives, which promotes responsiveness and adaptability.

The Gill Foundation, like many others, has worked hard to embrace inclusivity in a deep way. They describe this quality as follows: “Inclusive organizations not only have diverse individuals involved; more importantly, they are learning-centered organizations that value the perspectives and contributions of all people, and strive to incorporate the needs and viewpoints of diverse communities into the design and implementation of universal and inclusive programs.”

Inclusive thinking benefits more than just programs, however. Communication also becomes more effective when inclusivity becomes an organizational value. That’s because strategic communications requires talking and listening; an outbound behavior and an inbound one.

Inclusivity appears in many forms, ranging from diversity and cultural competency trainings to providing opportunities for partners, peers and grantees to share feedback on your organization’s performance. When organizations invest in growing the skills and systems required to truly solicit, hear and embrace a diverse set of internal and external opinions, they also expand their communication capacity.

Believers in top-down, command-and-control communications sometimes fear that too much inclusivity may dilute message potency or make an organization risk averse, but our research suggests otherwise. Time and again we see that organizations whose communication strategy is shaped by a multitude of opinions tend to be more precise, honed and focused at telling their story.

Voices

If we don't tell our story about why the work we do matters in the community, people won't know what we stand for and won't have a reason to engage with and be excited by what we're trying to achieve. Executive LeaderCommunity Foundation

Communication is a form of engagement. Change does not happen unless key stakeholders are engaged in substantive conversations, meaningful relationships, and practical actions that demonstrate change-making.Executive LeaderPrivate Foundation

Communication is important because the work only gets done if the people doing it and the people being helped understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, how well we are doing it, and what comes next.Executive LeaderPrivate Foundation

our positionMore people than ever understand the value of strategic communication.

The research gathered during the Communication Matters project, and shared in
this website, reflects a broad consensus that communications must be embraced as
an integral strategy for every organization seeking to advance social change.

We now believe the main challenge underlying the lack of effective communications
at many organizations is no longer about getting the importance of communications.
The opportunity lies in doing more effective communications.

methodology

From the outset of the Communication Matters project our objective was to cast a wide net and collect as many informed opinions as possible. We achieved this goal in several ways:

Formed an advisory group of communication professionals from private foundations, community foundations and nonprofits

Put out a call through the Network for “best in class” examples

Searched and reviewed the literature

Facilitated two online forums, one with communication professionals and one with program professionals

Broadly disseminated an online survey, with special outreach to CEOs, executive directors and program leaders